A primary goal of the labor movement is to make every job in our country a good job. To do that, we must and we will stand with every worker in the fight for basic rights and dignity on the job. More than 1 million working people are in danger of having their work permits stripped away if the Trump administration ends the Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs. This is unacceptable. We will fight for and with them just as they have fought for and with all of us.

The DACA and TPS programs help working people and they help the country. Here are just a few stories of union members whose lives have been changed because of these programs. Please send us your story of how DACA and TPS made your life better and helped you exercise your basic rights and find dignity on the job.

Reyna Sorto, Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) member:

Employers exploit immigrant workers because they think our fear will keep us silent from speaking out against abuses, even though TPS is not permanent, it does provide a level of protection that can give a worker strength to speak truth to power and denounce exploitative working conditions.

Karen Reyes, DACAmented teacher in Austin, Texas, and member of AFT:

DACA made me visible. It made me realize that those opportunities that I thought were not for me—were now possible. DACA made it possible for me to be able to find a job in teaching. It made it possible to be able to earn money to be help out my mom while she went through numerous health issues. DACA made it possible for me to teach children who are deaf and hard of hearing. DACA made me find my voice and made me be able to live without fear. We must #DefendDACA because after living here for 26 years—I am here to stay.

Gerdine Vessagne, housekeeper in Miami Beach, Florida:

TPS has allowed me to provide for my five children, including two back home and three born here. But this isn’t just about me. Over 50,000 Haitian nationals working in the U.S. have this protected status. We are the engine of Florida’s hospitality industry, much of which greatly depends on our labor.

Cecilia Luis, housekeeper in Orlando, Florida.:

I know a lot of people here that don’t eat or sleep because they’re worried they’ll be sent back to Haiti. It’s not as easy to leave when you’re sending money to your family to help them survive. My God knows everything, and I’m asking him to speak to their hearts so they don’t do this. A lot of people will suffer.

Areli Zarate, DACAmented teacher in Austin, Texas:

DACA allowed me the opportunity to come out of the shadows and lose the fear of deportation. I have a social security number and work permit which gives me the opportunity to follow my dream and teach. I am about to begin my fourth year of teaching with a big heart filled with love and passion for my profession. I am dedicated to my students and it’s hard to see myself doing something else. Yet, every time I have to renew my DACA I am reminded that my status is temporary. I am currently pending a decision on my renewal and I am praying to God that I will be allowed to teach for another two years until my next renewal.

Maria Elena Durazo, UNITE HERE General Vice President for Immigration, Civil Rights and Diversity, spoke for many working people in the hospitality industry:

The American hospitality industry runs because of the women and men on DACA and TPS working in it. These immigrants prove their value to this country every day, and many have been living in and contributing to America for more than a decade. These men and women have deep roots in this country, and are longtime employees, spouses, parents, neighbors and community members. Losing DACA and TPS would destroy both their families and the hotel industry that is built on their work. We must extend TPS and protect DACA—for our sisters and brothers working under them, for their families and for the health of the American economy.

These stories make it clear that the ability to exploit any worker undermines standards for all working people. Increasing the pool of vulnerable workers in our country directly threatens the labor movement’s mission of raising wages and improving working conditions. We call on our nation’s leaders to reverse the destructive course we are on and take these immediate steps to reduce the fear in our workplaces:

Defend DACA and protect this vital young workforce;

Continue TPS for all affected countries; and

Protect labor rights by preventing immigration enforcement from interfering with other important roles of government.

DACA and TPS holders are members of our families, our unions and our communities who have made positive contributions to our society for many years. We will not allow them to lose their rights and status. We will stand with them in the fight to defend these programs as a necessary part of our long-term struggle to ensure that all working people have rights at work and the freedom to negotiate together for fair pay and conditions.

We call on the Trump administration to demonstrate a genuine commitment to lifting up the wages, rights and standards of all working people by acting to defend and extend vital DACA and TPS protections.

This blog was originally published at AFLCIO.org on August 16, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kenneth Quinnell is a long-time blogger, campaign staffer and political activist. Before joining the AFL-CIO in 2012, he worked as labor reporter for the blog Crooks and Liars. Previous experience includes Communications Director for the Darcy Burner for Congress Campaign and New Media Director for the Kendrick Meek for Senate Campaign, founding and serving as the primary author for the influential state blog Florida Progressive Coalition and more than 10 years as a college instructor teaching political science and American History. His writings have also appeared on Daily Kos, Alternet, the Guardian Online, Media Matters for America, Think Progress, Campaign for America’s Future and elsewhere.

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/16/in-their-own-words-why-immigrant-worker-protections-must-be-extended/feed/0Defense secretary reveals the trans military ban is in limbohttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/15/defense-secretary-reveals-the-trans-military-ban-is-in-limbo/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/15/defense-secretary-reveals-the-trans-military-ban-is-in-limbo/#respondTue, 15 Aug 2017 16:26:23 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10474Secretary of Defense James Mattis sent some mixed messages Monday when he stopped by the Pentagon newsroom to discuss President Trump’s intended ban on transgender personnel in the military—which the president announced via Twitter. At best, the proposal remains in limbo and is still being studied; at worst, it’s inevitably still coming.

The key takeaway Mattis revealed is that Trump has yet to actually issue anything other than a few tweets and public comments. “I am waiting right now to get the President’s guidance in and that I expect to be very soon,” he explained.

In the meantime, the military is continuing to study the issue, consistent with what Mattis announced when he agreed to delay the implementation of transgender recruitment by six months. The change to recruitment policy was initially set to take place July 1.”The policy is going to address whether or not transgenders [sic] can serve under what conditions, what medical support they require, how much time would they be perhaps non-deployable leaving others to pick up their share of everything,” Mattis said. “There’s a host of issues and I’m learning more about this than I ever thought I would and it’s obviously very complex to include the privacy issues which we respect.” The reference to “privacy” is not a good sign: it’s a talking point deployed by opponents of transgender equality.

Mattis seemed dismissive of the research that had already been done before his predecessor, Ash Carter, announced last summer that the ban on trans military service would be lifted—including a massive study by the RAND Corporation, one of the most respected military think tanks. “I’m not willing to sign up for the [Rand Corp.] numbers you just used, and I’m not willing to sign up for the concern any of [the transgender service members] have,” the secretary said. “And I’m not willing to prejudge what the study will now bring out.”

Mattis also noted that the decision has been impacted by the lack of political appointees overseeing personnel issues at the Pentagon. He wants to “get them in to be able to answer those questions” before the ban is implemented.

The secretary stood by comments made by General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who said that nothing would change until Trump actually issued guidance, and “in the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect.” Mattis also said that his people were advising the White House, “but they write their own policy, of course.”

Besides his tweets, the only other comment Trump has made was at a press gaggle last week when he said that he’s doing the military “a great favor” by just implementing the ban and avoiding a “very complicated” and “very confusing” issue.

Asked about the haphazard way Trump announced the policy, Mattis defended the president. “You all elected—the American people elected—the commander-in-chief,” he said. “They didn’t elect me. So the commander-in-chief in our country, in our system of government, is elected by the people, and he has that authority and responsibility.”

This article originally appeared at ThinkProgress on August 15, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Zack Ford is the LGBTQ Editor at ThinkProgress.org, where he has covered issues related to marriage equality, transgender rights, education, and “religious freedom,” in additional to daily political news. In 2014, The Advocate named Zack one of its “40 under 40” in LGBT media, describing him as “one of the most influential journalists online.” He has a passion for education, having received a Bachelor’s in Music Education at Ithaca College and a Master’s in Higher Education at Iowa State University, and he relishes opportunities to return to classroom settings to discuss social justice issues with students.

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/15/defense-secretary-reveals-the-trans-military-ban-is-in-limbo/feed/0Oregon passes law protecting workers from predatory scheduling by bosseshttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/14/oregon-passes-law-protecting-workers-from-predatory-scheduling-by-bosses/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/14/oregon-passes-law-protecting-workers-from-predatory-scheduling-by-bosses/#respondMon, 14 Aug 2017 13:15:26 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10472Good news for Oregon workers in the retail and fast food industries. The state has become the first to pass a law protecting workers from some of the worst scheduling abuses employers love so much.

One in six Oregonians receive less than 24 hours of notice before their shifts, according to a survey the University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center published in February.

Now, Oregon is mandating that the state’s largest employers in the retail, hospitality and food service industries — those with more than 500 workers — give employees their schedules in writing at least a week ahead of time.

They’ll also have to give workers a 10-hour break between shifts, or pay them extra.

I worked for an international company that owns a bunch of coffee shops in airports. So while I was working there, they told me that I would have a set schedule. Within seven months, my schedule had changed eight times.

“I am a veteran with PTSD, due to being in Iraq a couple of times, and I was not able to go to my group counseling sessions because my schedule got changed.”

Laws like this should be on the Democratic agenda at all levels: Democratic state legislatures could be passing scheduling protections just as Republican state legislatures pass anti-abortion and anti-union laws, and if Democrats want to campaigning to retake Congress on a good jobs agenda, this belongs right alongside minimum wage and paid leave.

This blog was originally published at DailyKos Labor on August 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is the labor editor at Daily Kos. Previous. she was senior writer at Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. She has a PhD in sociology from Princeton University and has taught at Dartmouth College and the Princeton Theological Seminary. She is the author of “I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers.”

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/14/oregon-passes-law-protecting-workers-from-predatory-scheduling-by-bosses/feed/0Elon Musk May Be a “Visionary,” But His Vision Doesn’t Seem To Include Unionshttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/11/elon-musk-may-be-a-visionary-but-his-vision-doesnt-seem-to-include-unions/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/11/elon-musk-may-be-a-visionary-but-his-vision-doesnt-seem-to-include-unions/#respondFri, 11 Aug 2017 09:03:16 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10468Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been making more headlines than usual lately. Shortly after the business magnate claimed he had received governmental approval to build a hyperloop from New York to Washington, D.C., he got into a public argument with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the future of artificial intelligence. Musk also recently made comments regarding the production of Tesla’s new Model 3, a battery-electric sedan. “We’re going to go through at least six months of manufacturing hell,” he told journalists.

It’s hard to know exactly what constitutes “manufacturing hell,” but it might also be difficult to ever find out. That’s because, since last November, Tesla has required employees to sign confidentiality agreements which prevent them from discussing workplace conditions. This policy has faced increased criticism since February, as workers at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. plant have expressed concern over wages, safety and their right to unionize. They have reached out to the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) union, which is now intervening.

Last week, some of those workers made specific demands. A group called Tesla Workers’ Organizing Committee sent a letter to the company’s board members seeking safety improvements and a clearer promotion policy. The letter cites 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the last full year for which such information is available. “For that year, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that our injury rate was higher than that of sawmills and slaughter houses. Accidents happen every day,” reads the letter. The committee also addressed Tesla’s resistance to workplace organizing: “We should be free to speak out and to organize together to the benefit of Tesla and all of our workers. When we have raised this with management we have been met with anti-union rhetoric and action.”

Attention was originally drawn to the factory’s organizing fight after Tesla employee Jose Moran published a Medium post on February 9. Moran raises safety concerns, writing that, a few months ago, six of the eight people on his work team were on leave due to workplace injuries. He also breaks down problems with the factory’s wages. According to Moran, workers at the Tesla factory make between $17 and $21 in Alameda county, an area where the living wage is more than $28 an hour. Moran wrote that some of his coworkers make a two-hour commute to work because they can’t afford to live near the factory.

“Tesla’s Production Associates are building the future: They are doing the hard work to build the electric cars and battery packs that are necessary to reduce carbon emissions. But they are paid significantly below the living wage for one adult and one child in our community,” Maria Noel Fernandez, campaign director of the local worker advocacy group Silicon Valley Rising, told In These Times via email. “We believe that green jobs should be good jobs, and that they have a right to organize and advocate for themselves and their families.”

The day after Moran published his post, employees passed out literature containing the piece during a shift change at the factory. According to an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) made by workers, and obtained by Capital and Main, this prompted management to schedule a meeting where workers were told they couldn’t pass out information unless it was pre-approved by the employer. The same NLRB charge accuses Tesla of illegal surveillance and intimidation.

Moran’s piece, and the subsequent accusations, were taken seriously enough to be addressed by Elon Musk directly. In an email to employees, obtained by Buzzfeed, Musk declared that safety concerns ignored vast improvements established in 2017. Tesla also put out a statement echoing Musk’s claims. The company’s data points to a 52 percent reduction in lost time incidents and a 30 percent reduction in recordable incidents during the company’s first quarter.

Musk promised a “really amazing party” for workers after the Model 3 reached volume production. In addition to the party, the factory would eventually include free frozen yogurt stands and a roller coaster. “It’s going to get crazy good,” he wrote. As for Moran, Musk claimed he was a paid UAW plant and that he had looked into his claims and discovered they weren’t true. The UAW, he explained, “does not share our mission” and their “true allegiance is to the giant car companies, where the money they take from employees in dues is vastly more than they could ever make from Tesla.”

This wouldn’t be the last time Musk would use such language in regards to a union. Six months after Tesla acquired Germany’s Grohmann Engineering, Musk found himself clashing with the country’s dominant metalworkers’ union, IG Metall. The union intervened to insist that Tesla straighten out a wage discrepancy that had some workers claiming they were making 30 percent less than union rates. Musk sent a letter to Grohmann employees offering a one-time bonus—an extra 150 Euros a month—and Tesla shares instead of a pay increases that the employees desire. “I do not believe IG Metall shares our mission,” reads the letter.

“We’re a money-losing company,” Musk toldThe Guardian in May. “This is not some situation where, for example, we are just greedy capitalists who decided to skimp on safety in order to have more profits and dividends and that kind of thing.” Two months after that interview, Automotive News reported that Musk had been the highest paid auto executive of 2016, exercising stock options worth $1.34 billion. Musk’s incredible economic success hasn’t exactly been generated via an unfettered free market. According to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times in 2015, Musk’s companies have benefited from billions in government subsidies.

Whether or not Tesla’s board members are receptive to employee demands, it seems clear that the workers’ struggle is not going away anytime soon.

This article was originally published at In These Times on August 10, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Michael Arria covers labor and social movements. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelarria

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/11/elon-musk-may-be-a-visionary-but-his-vision-doesnt-seem-to-include-unions/feed/0Labor Department wants to reward financial advisors at the expense of consumershttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/10/labor-department-wants-to-reward-financial-advisors-at-the-expense-of-consumers/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/10/labor-department-wants-to-reward-financial-advisors-at-the-expense-of-consumers/#respondThu, 10 Aug 2017 08:53:35 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10466The Labor Department would like to delay a rule that would require financial advisors to act in the best interest of their customers and their retirement accounts.

The federal court filing, made on Wednesday, said the department wants to delay implementation of the rule to July 2019. The full implementation of the rule is currently set for January 2018.

In February, President Donald Trump ordered a review of the Obama-era regulation. Financial companies and lobbyists representing them have opposed the rule. On the same day of the order, White House advisor Gary Cohn, who is a former Goldman Sachs executive, told the Wall Street Journal he thought it was a “bad rule.” Congress has introduced bills trying to kill the rule on multiple occasions.

Right now, there are two standards investors must be aware of — the fiduciary standard and suitability standard. A financial advisor operating under what is called the “suitability standard” is only required to make sure a client’s investment is suitable for the client’s finances, age, and risk tolerance at that point in time, but they don’t have a great legal obligation to monitor the investment for the client.

But under the fiduciary standard, an advisor has to keep monitoring the investment as well as the customer’s overall financial picture. Under the fiduciary standard, advisors also must disclose all of their conflicts of interest, fees, and commissions. Essentially, this makes it more difficult for advisors to push investments that will make them money but may not be in the best interest of their clients.

Retirement plans have changed a lot since the 1970s, when more private workers were enrolled in defined-benefit plans funded by their employers that promised a certain monthly benefit once they retired. Now more people have defined-contribution plans, which don’t promise a specific benefit for people when they retire, requiring them to contribute money to an account they are responsible for. Only 10 percent of workers older than 22 have a traditional pension and only 6 percent of Millennials do. Most workers have to choose how to invest these contributions and manage their own retirement savings but most Americans aren’t knowledgeable on investment decisions.

A 2016 Prudential Investments survey of more than 1,500 Americans showed 42 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know how their assets were allocated in their portfolios, and 40 percent said they didn’t know how to prepare for retirement. Investment terms are often difficult to understand and investors may be overwhelmed by choices.

The financial industry argument against the rule is essentially that a commission system is necessary to pay for financial advice for the average investor, despite the adverse incentives it creates. Gary Burtless, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has disputed this argument.

“This claim does not seem terribly compelling. There are alternative ways to compensate financial advisors that do not create an obvious conflict between the interests of advisors and retirement savers,” Burtless writes.

The financial industry tried to persuade the public that investors were up in arms over the rule. The Financial Services Institute claimed that consumers sent over 100,000 letters with opinions on the rule. But Money reviewed 100 of the letters FSI claimed were from investors, and found that 64 percent came from financial advisors and people involved in financial companies.

The Trump administration would have to jump through numerous hoops to reverse the progress made on the rule, however, just as Obama officials did when they first wanted to advance the rule. The final rules were issued last year, but first the department took thousands of public comments, held four days of hearings, and 100 stakeholder meetings. The administration would have to field all of these comments and go through this process again to justify whatever changes it would make. It took about six years for the Obama administration to advance the fiduciary rule.

This article was originally published at ThinkProgess on August 10, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Casey Quinlan is a policy reporter at ThinkProgress. She covers economic policy and civil rights issues. Her work has been published in The Establishment, The Atlantic, The Crime Report, and City Limits.

Three different cases. Three different theories of gender discrimination. But one common thread – an old school presumption that certain blue-collar jobs are a “man’s work.”

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against three U.S. employers for sex discrimination in hiring. The lawsuits allege overt bias against female job candidates in the form of bogus physical tests, physical appearance, and a blatant “no girls allowed” hiring policy.

EEOC takes a strong stand against gender bias

Perhaps it was simply a coincidence of timing. But the EEOC is sending a message in three unconnected cases that gender discrimination will not be tolerated in 21st century America. When the EEOC was unable to resolve each of the cases through pre-litigation channels, it filed suit against a railroad (CSX Transportation), a shipping company (R&L Carriers) and a parking management service.

At CSX, female applicants failed physical requirement tests at a substantially higher rate than male candidates. Rather than indicating women are physically unfit for the industry, the EEOC contends that the tests favor men through arbitrary benchmarks.

Apparent rationale: They all take the same test. Not our fault if the ladies can’t cut it.

In the Eagle Parking case, a woman was turned down on the presumption – based on nothing more than her appearance – that she could not handle the “physicality” of the job. She was urged to apply for a desk job instead.

Apparent rationale: In the manager’s professional opinion, based on years of parking cars, a woman could not perform such a back-breaking feat.

In the R&L Carriers case, the EEOC alleges straight-up discrimination; no women are hired as dockworker and loaders, even when they are qualified candidates.

Apparent rationale: Some jobs are for dudes, and you’re not a dude.

Physical requirements can be an unfair barrier to women

The EEOC litigation will prompt a close look at physical ability requirements in candidate screening and hiring, particularly in traditionally male occupations. Courts have generally upheld the right of employers to use physical ability as a hiring criteria, with a few caveats: (a) physical tests must reflect the actual job duties, and (b) minimum requirements cannot be set arbitrarily high to exclude women.

For instance, only 7 percent of U.S. firefighters are female, chiefly because so few can pass the rigorous obstacle course exams. Through equal opportunity lawsuits, the physical ability standards have been scaled back in many jurisdictions to give female applicants a fighting chance to win the job and prove themselves. Detractors say the revised standards are watered down and compromise safety. Proponents say the standards were based on male demographics and were unnecessarily tough — no firefighter performs all those feats in an actual fire call.

Is the job really that rigorous?

Most blue-collar jobs do not require “American Ninja” strength and agility. Basic physical fitness is typically sufficient, and those who truly can’t do the work will soon quit or be let go. Too often, the barrier to employment is not women’s muscles but men’s outdated attitudes.

This blog was originally published at passmanandkaplan.com on August 8, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Authors: Founded in 1990 by Edward H. Passman and Joseph V. Kaplan, Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law, is focused on protecting the rights of federal employees and promoting workplace fairness. The attorneys of Passman & Kaplan (Edward H. Passman, Joseph V. Kaplan, Adria S. Zeldin, Andrew J. Perlmutter, Johnathan P. Lloyd and Erik D. Snyder) represent federal employees before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other federal administrative agencies, and also represent employees in U.S. District and Appeals Courts.

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/09/10461/feed/0You do not have a constitutional right to be extremely sexist at workhttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/08/you-do-not-have-a-constitutional-right-to-be-extremely-sexist-at-work/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/08/you-do-not-have-a-constitutional-right-to-be-extremely-sexist-at-work/#respondTue, 08 Aug 2017 18:40:56 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10454A male software engineer at Google, James Damore, wrote a 10-page memo in opposition to hiring practices that consider racial and gender diversity in tech, arguing that women were unable to do the same kind of work as their male peers. Days after it was circulated throughout the company and leakedto the press, he was fired.

Now many journalists, activists, and even politicians are arguing that he was unfairly punished for expressing his ideas, with some going so far as to say the employee was banished for “thought crimes.”

In this case, Damore’s thoughts were that women were biologically unsuited for advancement in tech in a number of ways and that women deserved their current status. In his anti-diversity screed, the software engineer decided to list personality traits that he says women have more of. Here is one:

Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

He also wrote that women have “higher agreeableness” and “extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness,” and that this is why women tend to have a harder time negotiating salary. He does not acknowledge that research shows again and again there is a social cost for women who negotiate for higher salaries.

In addition to saying that women will always have these specific qualities that prevent them from advancing in their careers, he flat out writes, “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.”

He also wrote, “However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices.” He listed mentoring, programs, and classes “only for people with a certain gender or race.”

Men from all sides of the political spectrum weighed in to argue that he should not have been fired.

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) tweeted out a National Review article with the headline, “Google Fires Employee Who Dared Challenge its Ideological Echo Chamber.” Julian Assange condemned the decision as “censorship.” Tim Miller, co-founder of the America Rising PAC, said Damore is being banished for “thought crimes.” Jeet Heer, senior editor at The New Republic, said the engineer should not have been fired for his ideas.

The engineer’s decision to write a 10-page memo, which he clearly spent a good deal of time writing, and then share that memo, is an action, however, not merely a thought.

In a Medium post, Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee, explained why the memo was enough to create a hostile workplace environment and thus warranted termination.

Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

Research shows that frequent and less intense but unchallenged sexist discrimination and organizational climates were similarly harmful to women’s well-being as more overt but less frequent acts of sexism, like sexual coercion. Heer suggested demotion as an alternative to firing but no matter his position, Damore would have some power over his co-workers since Google’s performance review process allows peer reviewers to give feedback on job performance. This includes employees who are junior to them.

Viewed this way, the decision to fire Damore was not censorship. It was a decision to protect women from a hostile workplace environment. Google prioritized the well-being of its workers and the company’s overall success over one man’s career.

Like most of the tech industry, Google employees are predominantly white men. In April, the Department of Labor accused the organization of “extreme” gender pay discrimination and pointed to evidence of “systemic compensation disparities.” Diversity statistics the company released last month revealed that 69 percent of its employees are male and 31 percent are female, but when it comes to technical roles, only 19 percent of the positions are held by women.

This blog was originally published at ThinkProgress.org on August 8, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Casey Quinlan is a policy reporter at ThinkProgress. She covers economic policy and civil rights issues. Her work has been published in The Establishment, The Atlantic, The Crime Report, and City Limits.

President Trump has resurrected an old canard in his effort to sell a new effort to restrict immigration into the United States. The legislation he backs, he said at a White House ceremony, was necessary in part to protect “minority workers competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals” under the current immigration system.

This theme is a hardy perennial in right-wing media and think-tank reports, often featuring members of a small but persistent cadre of conservative black people willing to be the face of the pernicious idea that in order to boost the fortunes of African Americans, we have to keep new immigrants out of the country.

This notion keeps getting debunked, but Trump trotted it out anyway as his administration launches key assaults against the core concerns of African-American people.

This comes the same week as news reports that the Justice Department is gearing up a new assault on affirmative action programs at colleges, based on the lie that these programs discriminate against white and Asian college applicants.

Career civil-rights lawyers in the Justice Department are so aghast at the idea that their agency’s efforts are being redirected from addressing the continuing effects of structural racism that Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to use political appointees and outside lawyers to lead the effort.

Remember that this pronouncement also is in the shadow of a speech Trump gave before police officers in Long Island, New York, in which he encouraged police officers to rough up criminal suspects.

“[W]hen you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice,” Trump told the assembly of law enforcement officers.

Even people in his own administration denounced the speech as inappropriate, as did prominent police chiefs. Later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Trump’s comment as a joke.

But in African-American communities around the country, where the drumbeat of stories of police officers using clearly unwarranted deadly force against African Americans continues to reverberate, no one was laughing.

Vice senior editor Wilbert Cooper convincingly took on the black-people-harmed-by-immigration myth in a 2016 essay. Not only is it false that immigration of lower-skilled people harms African-American employment prospects, he wrote that “counter to what Trump and others contend, there’s evidence that immigration can actually help low-skilled blacks get back to work.”

Denver University economist Jack Strauss analyzed a wide breadth of data from metropolitan areas across the US in 2013 to determine whether blacks in particular lose out when it comes to immigration. He found there to be a “one-way causation from increased immigration including Latinos to higher black wages and lower poverty.” In other words, immigration is good for black workers. According to Strauss’s summary of his findings, a “1 percent rise in Latino immigration contributes to a 1.4 percent increase in employment rates among African Americans,” and “for every 1 percent increase in a city’s share of Latinos, African median and mean wages increase by 3 percent.”

The reality is, as Cooper writes, cities like Cleveland and Detroit are working to attract immigrants, because of the impact immigrants have on the overall economic vitality of the communities they make their home.

Jobs Tell The Story

On Friday, the federal government will release an updated picture of the nation’s employment situation. The previous report, covering June, showed that the nation’s unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, and African-American unemployment was 7.1 percent, down significantly from 8.8 percent in June 2016.

The significant decrease in black unemployment is in itself a direct rebuke to the idea that drastic measures to restrict immigration are necessary to lower unemployment rates in African-American communities.

What that progress affirms that economic growth combined with economic justice and fairness is essential to closing the gaps between black, brown and white employment prospects.

What The Nation Needs

What the nation needs is not an assault on immigration, but an assault on the effects of structural racism and economic inequality. Instead of dismantling affirmative action, we need investments in schooling for African-American children that start at preschool – and before.

We need to reinvest in communities that have been left behind by the free-market idolatry of too many state governments and, now, the federal government itself. We need every worker to have a living wage and access to affordable housing.

Above all, we need to end the assaults on the fundamental dignity of African-American people – from the coded reference to “thugs” who need to be roughed up by police to the active exalting by White House officials of the nostrums of white nationalism.

Thanks but no thanks, President Trump. The overwhelming majority of African Americans don’t want your faux paternalism at the expense of our immigrant brothers and sisters.

This blog was originally published at OurFuture.org on August 3, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Isaiah J. Poole is communications director of People’s Action, and has been the editor of OurFuture.org since 2007. Previously he worked for 25 years in mainstream media, most recently at Congressional Quarterly, where he covered congressional leadership and tracked major bills through Congress. Most of his journalism experience has been in Washington as both a reporter and an editor on topics ranging from presidential politics to pop culture. His work has put him at the front lines of ideological battles between progressives and conservatives. He also served as a founding member of the Washington Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/07/trumps-bid-to-pit-black-and-brown-workers-against-each-other/feed/0The UAW Vote in Mississippi is a Battle for the Soul of the U.S. Labor Movementhttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/04/the-uaw-vote-in-mississippi-is-a-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-u-s-labor-movement/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/04/the-uaw-vote-in-mississippi-is-a-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-u-s-labor-movement/#respondFri, 04 Aug 2017 23:57:23 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10459After years of painstaking work by United Auto Workers (UAW) organizers to build support for a union at the big Nissan auto and truck assembly plant near Canton, Miss., the workers themselves will vote today and tomorrow on whether to accept UAW their collective bargaining voice at the plant.

“I think it [union approval] will pass,” UAW president Dennis Williams told a press conference just days before the vote, “but we’re doing an ongoing evaluation. We’ve been thinking about it for six to seven months,” roughly since the UAW held a large march and rally at the factory attended by Bernie Sanders. The union says it is particularly concerned about a surge in the kind of unlawful management tactics to scare workers that brought charges against Nissan this week from the National Labor Relations Board.

The Canton factory is one of only three Nissan factories worldwide where workers do not have a union. Built in 2003, it is one of a spate of auto “transplants,” or foreign-owned factories built with state subsidies for the past three decades, largely in the South and border states.

Many see the upcoming vote as another test of whether unions can thrive in the South, where union membership has historically been well below the national average. However, the battle is far greater. Now the corporate strategies and values of the South have persisted and influenced multinational companies, as well as labor relations and politics in the North. The Nissan campaign is best conceived as a battle for the U.S. labor movement.

Nissan has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Organizing the South

Organized labor, usually prodded by leftists in the movement, has undertaken high-profile campaigns in the South to organize unions across the racial divides. Such drives were especially prominent during the 1930s-era organizing upsurge and the post-World War II “Operation Dixie,” which lacked adequate support from existing unions and was plagued by internal political divisions.

The UAW has, at various times, escalated organizing in the South, especially when General Motors was considering relocating much production there in the 1960s—and when the transplant growth surged in recent decades.

Despite the shortcomings of labor’s campaigns, many union strategists think that unions can only reverse their decline by directly tackling the racist strategy of employers and their conservative political allies. But employers have many tools to divide workers, such as Nissan’s employment of temporary, contract workers to divide a predominately African-American workforce.

In recent years, the South has suffered key organizing blows, including the big defeat in January for the Machinists’ union trying to organize the new Boeing factory in Charleston, S.C., and the limited UAW success organizing a skilled trades union at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn. against a supposedly neutral employer. Such defeats typically inspire funereal chants for labor rights and unions, but sound like party music for managers and investors.

Yet, some organizers dispute that the South is impossible territory. One veteran organizer with the AFL-CIO, who has overseen many organizing drives in the South and asked not to be identified or directly quoted, said that he thought it was not significantly more difficult to organize in the South. It just took more time and more money.

The organizer cited one success that defied expectations: the campaigns over roughly 15 years to organize 26,000 workers and preserve business at Louisiana’s giant Avondale shipyards for a shifting cast of corporate owners doing repair and rebuilding work mainly on military contracts. Ultimately, a decline in military orders led its latest owner to close the shipyards, wiping out the organizing victory.

“The unions often do not realize it, but they have been winning in the South more than in the Midwest for years,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell University labor relations professor who specializes in research on union organizing. “Because [in the South] there are more women working, more African Americans, and because there’s less high-tech work.” Each of those categories of workers is more pro-union than their counterparts, thus building in a small theoretical advantage in the South.

The South’s poor labor standards are spreading

In the end, it may be that the poor labor standards of the South are spreading nationwide. The ascendant conservative political power of the new Republican Party, linked with the more aggressively anti-worker and anti-union policies of big corporations and financial firms, indicate that, in this country’s long Civil War, the South is gaining ground.

Consider what has occurred from 1983, when Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” ads were on the horizon, as well as in 2016, when Donald Trump pledged to “make America great again.” Then and now, most people would consider Michigan and Wisconsin as typically northern, in terms of labor conditions and union density. Yet over that period, federal data shows that the percentage of all workers in Michigan who were covered by union contracts dropped from 32.8 percent in 1983 to 15.5 percent in 2016. For Wisconsin, the share dropped from 26.9 percent to 9.0 percent.

Unions are losing members and failing to gain new ones at an adequate rate to avoid the rough halving of the union share of the workforce over the past 15 years in most of both the South and the North.

Assault on workers knows no boundaries

It will be better for workers everywhere if the Canton, Miss., workers vote for the union, but management still has the upper hand. Workers are still weak and getting weaker nearly everywhere, with partial exceptions, like the Fight for 15 movement, which flourishes in nearly all of the country.

“Right to work” laws threaten unions nationwide, by prohibiting them from charging agency fees to workers who do not join the union but benefit from actions it takes. In recent years, the widespread passage of such laws outside of the South—now extending to half of all states—is a clear indication of the decline in union power.

Workers in Canton may win a union for a variety of reasons beyond the basic proposition that they need collective power to counter the power of their bosses. Or they may reject the union due to fear engendered by Nissan and its anti-union campaign, out of conservative political beliefs or for other reasons.

The best union organizers—and some very good organizers have played a major role at Nissan—understand how important it is to involve workers themselves as-organizers in reaching out to workers. In addition, organizers recognize it is vitally important to mobilize the progressive leaders and groups in the community for support, and employ a wide assortment of tactics to minimize the influence of the boss’s war on unions—a war conducted in large part on turf and terms favorable to the employer.

However, if the labor movement is striving to with significant gains for workers, it must create a progressive strategy for politics, workplace organizing and culture that focuses on the working class very broadly construed, including multiple levels of poverty, affluence and job histories. U.S. union organizing will need to strengthen and expand its community activities to develop a broader range of strategies to defeat racism. Within such a political context, union organizing might prosper—and workers might do so as well.

Whether the UAW does or does not win this summer, future successful organizing of workers in their communities and workplaces require an alternative political force that is more supportive and transformative.

This piece was originally published at In These Times on August 3, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing in 1976. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy.

]]>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/04/the-uaw-vote-in-mississippi-is-a-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-u-s-labor-movement/feed/0Sarbanes Oxley Whistleblower Protection Law at 15 Years: Know Your Rightshttp://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/03/sarbanes-oxley-whistleblower-protection-law-at-15-years-know-your-rights/
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2017/08/03/sarbanes-oxley-whistleblower-protection-law-at-15-years-know-your-rights/#respondThu, 03 Aug 2017 22:18:49 +0000http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=10451In the wake of Enron and other corporate scandals that wiped out retirement savings and left millions unemployed, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which contains a robust whistleblower protection provision. The whistleblower provision is intended to combat a “corporate code of silence,” which “discourage[d] employees from reporting fraudulent behavior not only to the proper authorities, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the SEC, but even internally.” Congress sought to empower whistleblowers to serve as an effective early warning system and help prevent corporate scandals.

Congressional hearings about the Enron scandal probed why such a massive fraud was not detected earlier. The testimony and documents revealed that when employees of Enron and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, attempted to report corporate misconduct, they faced retaliation, including discharge. And essentially no legal protection existed for whistleblowers, such as Sherron Watkins, who tried to stop the fraud.

Fifteen years after Congress enacted SOX, internal whistleblowers remain the best source of fraud detection. But corporate whistleblowers continue to suffer retaliation, and, therefore, widespread fear of retaliation persists. A survey performed by the Ethics Resource Center found that nearly half of employees observe misconduct each year, and one in five employees who reports misconduct perceives retaliation for doing so.

On the fifteenth anniversary of SOX, whistleblower law firm Zuckerman Law released a free guide to the SOX whistleblower protection law: “Sarbanes-Oxley Whistleblower Protection: Robust Protection for Corporate Whistleblowers.” The guide summarizes SOX whistleblower protections and offers concrete tips for corporate whistleblowers based on lessons learned during years of litigating SOX whistleblower cases. Workplace Fairness also has a summary of corporate whistleblowers available here.

The goal of the guide is to arm corporate whistleblowers with the knowledge to effectively combat whistleblower retaliation, avoid the pitfalls that can weaken a SOX whistleblower case, and formulate an effective strategy to obtain the maximum recovery. In particular, the guide addresses key issues for corporate whistleblowers to consider when they experience retaliation due to their protected whistleblowing:

What disclosures are protected under SOX?

What types of retaliation are prohibited under SOX?

Can a whistleblower sue an individual under SOX?

Is a whistleblower’s motive for engaging in protected activity relevant in a whistleblower-protection case?

Lead author Zuckerman commented, “Whistleblowers put a lot on the line when they expose wrongdoing, and they deserve an effective remedy to combat retaliation. Hopefully this guide will help whistleblowers do the right thing and keep their jobs. And for whistleblower that have suffered retaliation, the guide can help them explore options to hold their employers accountable.”

About the Author: Jason Zuckerman, Principal of Zuckerman Law, litigates whistleblower retaliation, qui tam, wrongful discharge, discrimination, non-compete, and other employment-related claims. He is rated 10 out of 10 by Avvo, was recognized by Washingtonian magazine as a “Top Whistleblower Lawyer” in 2007 and 2009 and selected by his peers to be included in The Best Lawyers in America® and in SuperLawyers.